Violence Against Women: The Faces Behind the Statistics

Violence Against Women: The Faces Behind the Statistics
The front page of the Luz Maria Foundation website. LuzMariaFoundation.org
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“What you do not see from the statistics is the face of the actual victim,” said activist Luz Maria Utrera in a recent interview. The statistic to which Utrera referred is as alarming as it is largely unknown to the general public: One in three women in the world and one in five women in America will be beaten, raped, or suffer from other forms of abuse, including female genital mutilation—as a child, as an adolescent, or as an adult.

Most of those attacks, according to most studies on the subject, occur in the victim’s home and are perpetrated in the majority of the cases by a husband, a live-in boyfriend, a parent, or another close family member.

“Domestic violence against women is a global pandemic,” stated Utrera, a native of Argentina and a 2006 graduate of that nation’s University of El Salvador Law School.

Luz Maria Utrera with Malala Yousafzai at the Pakistani ambassador's home in New York on July 13, 2013. (LuzMariaFoundation.org)
Luz Maria Utrera with Malala Yousafzai at the Pakistani ambassador's home in New York on July 13, 2013. LuzMariaFoundation.org